1 November 19, 2017 Pastor Tom Micah 6:1-8 November 19, 2017 One great challenge in parenting is teaching children to get along. Brothers and sisters have amazing ability to get on one another’s nerves. Sometimes they act like best buddies. You can look out your back yard window and see them playing harmoniously on the play structure or making a snow man together. Other times you look out your back window to see one sibling trapped inside the play structure with other siblings keeping them there as prisoner. Or instead of making a snow man together, one sibling tries to put the other sibling inside the snow man. Now I’m sure nothing like that ever happened in your family. I remember having to teach our kids things like “No, you may not to wrap a cord around your brother’s neck and see if he’ll choke.” Or “It’s not okay to take your little sister and wrap her up in blankets so she can’t move and then push her around in a laundry basket.” Sometimes, after we saved the life of the particular child under threat that day, we would teach or more often force our children to say sorry. Most of the time they obliged us with the obligatory “sorry” while giving the death stare to their sibling the second we looked away. Most of us probably had similar training from our parents as we grew up. But as we grow into teenage, young adult and adult years, we still need to work at getting along. Most people here probably can think of one or more person we struggle to get along with. We have to decide what we will do about the relationship especially with those closest to us. Broken relationships need restoration if we’re going to get along. The same is true in our relationship with God. Sometimes it’s close, sometimes it’s strained. Today, we are going to follow a conversation about a broken relationship between God and His people. God will initiate the process of restoring the relationship. As He does this, He reveals ways His people, like you and me, can maintain a good relationship with Him. If we will follow these ways, we can contribute to worship that pleases Him. After all, worship is vital to our relationship with God. If we’re not engaged in appropriate worship, we will not be in a good relationship with God. So we will learn some ways that contribute to healthy God pleasing worship. I also hope you will be reminded of how God has reached out to you at different points in your life. This is all found in a message from another, a Minor Prophet in the OT. We spent several messages with Amos, the prophet from the southern kingdom of Judah. He confronted the northern Israelites about their worship because they 2 worshipped intensely but wrongly. They had a wrong understanding of God and lived lives that didn’t back up their worship. Then we met Hosea. When God called him to publicly portray the broken relationship between God and the people. Hosea married an unfaithful wife to remind the Israelites of their unfaithfulness to God. Yet, God would reach out in a pursuing persistent love. Now we come to Micah. He was a prophet who lived in the southern kingdom. He prophesied there after the fall of northern kingdom. Yet the people of the southern kingdom followed the unfaithful worship and living patterns of their northern neighbors. So Micah served as God’s messenger to call them back before it was too late. In one of his messages, we discover these 3 everyday ways to contribute to worship that pleases God and to restore and maintaining healthy relationships. So its found in Micah 6:1-8. Don’t be shy to look it up in the table of contents of your Bibles if you need to. It’s on page 876 of my Bible which doesn’t help you at all if you don’t have the exact same Bible I have. But it is on page 661 in the Bibles in front of you. Or you can find it on your devices. Micah 6:1-8 reading from the English Standard Version. Micah 6:1-8 (ESV) 6 Hear what the LORD says: Arise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice. 2 Hear, you mountains, the indictment of the LORD, and you enduring foundations of the earth, for the LORD has an indictment against his people, and he will contend with Israel. 3 “O my people, what have I done to you? How have I wearied you? Answer me! 4 For I brought you up from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery, and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. 5 O my people, remember what Balak king of Moab devised, and what Balaam the son of Beor answered him, and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal, that you may know the righteous acts of the LORD.” 3 6 “With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? 7 Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” 8 He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? Commentators notice that this passage seems to be structured around the word “what.” I count 8 occurrences in 8 verses. It is a question & answer conversation where each party asks a question to try to gain some clarity. So I’m going to follow the “whats” through the passage to get us to those 3 every day ways to maintain our relationship with God and with others. God - What have I done to you (6:1-3)? God declares the first “what” question after He initiates a serious conversation. It looks like He’s taking Israel to court. Notice the language of the court in the first verses. “Plead your case. Hear the indictment. The Lord has an indictment or charge to make against His people”. There is something wrong in their relationship. So the Lord calls witnesses. Verse 1 – “Arise, plead your case before the mountains and let the hills hear your voice.” Mountains and hills dominate the eastern half of Israel. Those mountains and hills existed throughout Israel’s history. They would have seen all that happened. If they could talk, they would affirm the Lord’s charge against the people. God registers His complaint. God is the prosecutor. The people are the defendants. The mountains and hills serve as witnesses. You’d think that the next step would be the reading of the charges against Israel. But in verse 3 the Lord suddenly shows compassion. He appeals to His people with love and asks “O my people, what have I done to you?” Instead of launching into accusation the Lord invites conversation. If you want to actually address a broken relationship, one way to start is to invite discussion. Immediately accusing another will naturally lead to a defensive response. But a question invites reflection and discussion. 4 The Lord’s question identifies that there is an issue. There is something wrong. Some breach has occurred that begs the question. The Lord follows up “what have I done to you” with “How have I wearied you?” What has to have happened for the Lord to ask such a question? Well, it seems the people complained about a burdensome relationship with the Lord. It seems like whenever He approaches, they roll their eyes or sigh deeply or give Him the cold shoulder. It’s like they are irritated by His presence. You may have experienced such tension in a relationship, when someone treats you like an irritation or intrusion. So the Lord asks these questions as an invitation to begin discussing the breach in their relationship. But no one answers. You know when you try to talk with someone about what’s bothering them and they say “nothing,” when you know there is something? It seems a little like that here. The Lord asks for an answer but there is none. So He decides to provide an answer to His own question. He moves from asking “What have I done to you” to “What I have done for you.” God - What I have done for you. (6:4-5) Verses 4 and 5 bring up four examples of the Lord’s action on behalf of the people. First, He rescued them from slavery. “I brought you up from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery.” The people groaned in Egypt under the oppressive treatment of the slave drivers for 430 years. But the Lord intervened to rescue them out of the iron fist of that great nation by the 10 plagues. Second, He provided great leaders. “I sent before you Moses, Aaron and Miriam.” The Exodus account tells us they were a sister and two brothers. Aaron and Miriam were born first. Moses was born during a time when the Pharaoh grew concerned about the rapid population growth of the Israelites. So he sanctions the killing of all Hebrew baby boys 2 years old and younger, Moses should have been one of them.